Dave Warner, the cheating scandal and what really happened in South Africa
In South Africa, cricket’s agent provocateur developed a man-eating grievance — and his bosses saw a chance to get rid of him.
This article was first published in 2018.
After the Hobart Test of November 2016 ended with Australia bowled out twice in little more than 90 overs, the atmosphere in the home dressing room was suitably funereal.
Australia had sustained five consecutive Test defeats at home and abroad. Five team members were about to lose their places. Chairman of selectors Rod Marsh had already handed in his commission; captain Steve Smith walked in from a post-match press conference where he had admitted feeling “embarrassed to be sitting here”.
On this private grief, two others were about to intrude. Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland and general manager team performance Pat Howard held the floor, incongruous in their dark jackets and ties amid the cricketers and support staff in their official gear. And they were scathing: losing like this was not an option.
Smith, as he describes in his autobiography, had never seen Sutherland and Howard together in such a context: “It’s not something I’d experienced before in my career and I hope it’s not something I’ll ever experience again.”
It was less what the executives said than the height that they said it from. “If you get a dressing-down from what you would describe as ‘suits’ … then you know things have gone badly off the rails.”
This week in South Africa, the suits were back, and the rails led over a cliff.
Sutherland arrived with Howard to pronounce sentence on Smith, his deputy David Warner, and Warner’s opening partner Cameron Bancroft, who will ever be stained as cheats and liars.
No sooner had they departed than coach Darren Lehmann was foreshadowing his last Test in charge, it being “the right time to step away” — that is, before he was pushed. The Australian team’s crisis of form in 2016, bad as it seemed at the time, was as nothing compared to its current crisis of reputation.
But are the two related? Have the intolerance of failure, the exaltation of success, the arrogance of wealth and an idee fixewith commercial outcomes led to this dead end of execration and exile?
After all, there’s a certain irony in Sutherland’s rediscovery of the “spirit of cricket”, which last year was quietly dropped from CA’s published strategy, replaced by a compound of jaded slogans about “how we play”: “Be real, smash the boundaries, make every ball count, stronger together.” At times over the years, CA has given the appearance of caring little about the sport’s image, except as a brand or a product. One was reminded this last week of the conference five years ago where CA’s commercial chief Ben Amarfio argued that controversy in sport was not a problem — it could even be advantageous.
Citing rights deals signed by the Australian Football League and National Rugby League amid cycles of negative publicity about drugs, violence and corruption, Amarfio argued that “noise” in “the media” actually created “a lot more interest in your brand and your sport” by generating “a lot of discussion and debate”.
Now that he is pitching Australian cricket to suddenly sceptical broadcasters, the Nine Network having opted for nice, wholesome Australian Open tennis, and that a hard-won Test sponsor has quit, Magellan terminating its relationship two years early, one wonders how Amarfio’s thesis is shaping up.
Lehmann was cleared of direct involvement in the shortcuts the players took in attempting to doctor the ball during the Third Test. Yet before the Test series, Lehmann appeared quite sanguine about such practices: “Obviously there’s techniques used by both sides to get the ball reversing. That’s just the way the game goes. I have no problem with it. Simple.”
For the past few years, Warner has been in charge of Australia’s handling and management of the ball, and is now held chiefly responsible for Bancroft’s crude and inept attempts to do the same. But given his coach’s public attitudes, he might conceivably have felt he had carte blanche.
Nobody, meanwhile, was identified more closely than Lehmann with the rough-house style of cricket from which CA is now back-pedalling like a terrified tailender facing a fast bowler. In the end it hardly mattered whether or not his fingerprints were on the sandpaper.
Let’s take a step back, as all these figures are interlinked. Sutherland, a tall, grave and rather shy figure who wears a jacket and tie like a suit of armour, has been CEO for nearly 17 years, during which the organisation’s revenues have grown more than tenfold.
Howard, with a background in property and rugby, and Amarfio, from radio and football, were recruited in 2011 and 2012 respectively, as part of an executive makeover.
At the time, the Australian team was rebuilding, falteringly, as the last remnants of a great generation moved on. CA was launching new attractions, notably a bold domestic Twenty20 competition, the Big Bash League, and it was in the market for new stars.
Warner, newly launched on his way through T20, made a perfect fit. Brash, volatile and suggestible, in some respects he is a more completely modern figure than even Smith.
Warner also presented management challenges. Indeed, it was his loss of control one infamous night at the Walkabout in Birmingham in June 2013, when he took a drunken swing at English batsman Joe Root, that made for Lehmann’s ascension as coach.
Installing Lehmann in place of the hapless Mickey Arthur, Sutherland could hardly have been clearer about where the buck stopped: “Discipline, consistency of behaviour and accountability for performance are all key ingredients that need to improve. And we see that the head coach is ultimately responsible for that.”
Yet one of the sharpest appraisals of Australia’s predicament came last week from Arthur, now coach of the Pakistan team, who in a post on the website Players’ Voice argued that the deterioration in the Australian team and organisational culture was “always going to end like this”.
“I have been bitterly disappointed watching the Australian cricket team over the last few years,” Arthur wrote. “The behaviour has been boorish and arrogant. The way they’ve gone about their business hasn’t been good, and it hasn’t been good for a while.
“I know what my Pakistani players were confronted with in Australia two summers ago. I heard some of the things said to the English players during the Ashes. It was scandalous.”
Sooner or later, Arthur argued, the culture was bound to eat its own: “Despite generational change, independent reviews and too many behavioural spotfires to list, Cricket Australia and the national team had demonstrated no real willingness or desire to improve the culture within their organisation from season to season. That could lead to only one conclusion. An explosion.”
An explosion it has been, and it’s important to recognise that while Smith, Warner and Bancroft have been punished for specific offences under CA’s code of conduct, the sentences have been calibrated according to public indignation, which itself is inflamed by a sense of accumulated misdeeds and annoyances.
It is a strength of cricket that Australians feel such an intense sense of connection with and proprietorship of the national team. It is why they experienced such a personal sense of loss 3½ years ago on the death of Phillip Hughes.
That also makes it a fraught relationship. Australians have high expectations of their cricketers. They want to look up to and be proud of them. They want to see them embodying special values, national traits.
Some thought that Hughes’s tragic death might become the prelude to a kinder, gentler game. New Zealand’s cricketers, who were playing a Test against Pakistan at the time, were deeply affected, as their captain Brendon McCullum recalled in his autobiography: “It was so strange, yet felt so right, that after Phil’s death, we didn’t really care about the result.
“The fact that nothing we could or couldn’t do on the field really mattered … had an amazingly liberating effect.”
Australian cricket experienced harrowing grief, but no liberation. Perhaps it would have involved too much soul-searching: sport here defaults readily to ersatz machismo.
When they were opposed in the World Cup three years ago, in fact, Australians roundly mocked the Black Caps’ approach. Keeper Brad Haddin insisted that McCullum’s New Zealanders “deserved” to be sledged as viciously as possible because they were “nice”, which he regarded as a deliberate ploy to make the Australians “uncomfortable”.
(Irony alert: one of Lehmann’s thought bubbles last week involved taking “a leaf out of someone like, say, New Zealand’s book, the way they play and respect the opposition”, the inference being that this for Australians would be a new experience. Haddin, meanwhile, is Australia’s fielding coach.)
So the team marched on, precluded from real introspection by dumb obedience and relentless scheduling: since the World Cup, 38 Tests, 56 one-day internationals, 23 T20 internationals, with Smith and Warner involved in all but a handful. All with, it must be said, the full consent of their bosses.
“In my view I don’t think we have too many troubles at all,” said high performance chief Howard in October 2016 when former captain Michael Clarke spoke of a cultural malaise in the Australian team set-up. “I am very happy with how the guys get on together, it’s very strong and I haven’t got any concerns in that space.”
Howard is an energetic and meticulous technocrat, with a propensity for spitting out data reminiscent of Mr Memory in The 39 Steps. He is also oblivious to his limitations and dismissive of criticism, perhaps overcompensating for his lack of cricket background.
He formed a tight unit with Lehmann and national talent manager Greg Chappell, who returned to the selection panel after Rod Marsh’s resignation. And they enjoyed just enoughsuccess to keep doubt at bay.
Nor were Smith and Warner, captain and vice-captain, the types to lead cultural change.
Smith’s boyish exterior hides … well, a boyish interior. He lives for cricket, which is just as well because the system offers him nothing else, except money, in quantities barely meaningful anyway. He owns shares in racehorses he has never watched live; he follows the Roosters but never gets to games.
Smith is a virtuoso batting soloist. Interpersonal relations occur at a pitch he does not quite hear. While his predecessor Clarke coveted control of his team in all its aspects, Smith has relied heavily on Lehmann, and an increasingly crowded back room.
In the ascendant, Smith has looked unassailable. Under pressure, he has sometimes appeared brittle. From Sri Lanka in 2016, where he grew increasingly besieged and brooding, he was sent home early.
In India last year, he suffered a notorious “brain fade” with the decision review system at Bengaluru, and vehemently denounced an opponent for claiming a catch on the bounce at Dharamsala.
Warner is, meanwhile, as Warner does, and has had a consistent enabler in Lehmann.
On the field, Australia’s vice-captain has provided their abrasive competitive surface; off it, his coach has smoothed things over. When Warner was fined after a confrontation with India’s Rohit Sharma in a one-day international, for example, Lehmann dismissed it as “just the tail end of some chat that had been going on for a while”.
Warner embraced his role as Lehmann’s agent provocateur variously — at times with a manic glee, at other times with seeming reservations. A year ago in India, for example, Warner seemed almost withdrawn, and his batting form attenuated accordingly.
What then broke the nexus of players and overseers was last year’s pay dispute between CA and the Australian Cricketers Association as the representative of the country’s elite male and female cricketers.
The dispute was not so much about the top players as it was about rank-and-file domestic cricketers and their entitlement to partake directly of a proportion of revenue.
But the campaign, which roiled for nine months, was costly and divisive. The ubiquitous Howard was instrumental in CA’s negotiations until Sutherland’s belated involvement.
Smith publicly endorsed the ACA’s position, while Warner was drawn regularly and sometimes unwisely into the fray.
The dispute’s resolution in the ACA’s favour was a humiliation for CA and perhaps also a reinforcement for the players. Certainly, as summer began, Warner seemed to carry himself with renewed swagger, returning to his accustomed role against a favoured opponent — in Australian eyes, all is fair against England.
Quarry perceived to be vulnerable and inexperienced, such as Jonny Bairstow and Tom Curran, were singled out for particular attention.
In this, again, Warner had full institutional backing. The Ashes were replete with malicious glee, whether it was CA’s overeager media arm tizzying up nonsensical ball-tampering stories against James Anderson in Melbourne or CA’s dunderhead marketers and their crass mobile presentation stage in Sydney.
No thought of the “spirit of cricket” then; just Ben Amarfio’s lip-smacking relish for “controversy”.
Especially given the Australians’ pre-series insistence on the fading of stump mics, one suspects that Warner was similarly primed in South Africa. His visible targets were quietly spoken Quinton de Kock and new cap Aiden Markram.
But South Africa, team and country, presented a harder target. Opponents were more skilful, crowds more confronting. Smith and Warner were neutralised on the field and antagonised off it.
Both developed man-eating grievances: Smith about the escape from suspension of his nemesis Kagiso Rabada, Warner about the disgusting vilification of his wife, Candice.
They were playing like angry men, yet nobody among their amply resourced and hugely experienced coaching staff seemed to intuit this or prove capable of taking action.
On the contrary, Lehmann sided decisively with Warner when the Australian vice-captain had his confrontation with de Kock: “When it crossed the line he defended his family and women in general, so from my point of view I thought he did the right thing.”
Smith and Warner made, we know now, disastrous personal choices, in doing so implicating an inexperienced teammate. This has been the story’s most damaging dimension, that Bancroft fell in holus-bolus with the conspiracy.
Yet Bancroft was in his way the system’s most studious disciple — cricket’s equivalent of the company man, carefully nurtured and promoted, encouraged and lauded for his self-sacrificing dedication to the team culture.
So the “suits” arrived to pass judgment on the system they helped build and the individuals they effectively groomed, ridding themselves into the bargain of the troublesome Warner.
Trailed now is “an independent review into the conduct and culture of our Australian men’s teams”.
At the moment it is no more than a wish, and the precedents are unpromising. When CA held an allegedly independent review of its men’s teams seven years ago, interviewees were astonished to find Sutherland sitting in on their interviews.
It is far from clear, moreover, that the review should stop with the teams. Indeed, it is telling how rapidly CA has found itself deserted by stakeholders and partners in this affair — not one has been heard in support.
For many years CA has looked on enviously at its cross-town rival the AFL; it now finds itself equally unloved, but with an inferior story to tell and sell.
Who will judge the suits for that? Because someone must.
Gideon Haigh is The Australian’s senior cricket columnist. He is the author of 34 books, 22 of them about cricket.
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